This is what speaking truth to power REALLY looks like. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu delivers one of the tightest, most fact intensive political speeches I have ever heard.

Israel, the one true democracy in the Middle East, is unjustly singled out for condemnation more often than all the nations of the world combined. Is it possible that tiny Israel is worse than China, N. Korea, Sudan, Syria, Libya, Iran, Myanmar, etc., and the rest of the world’s dictatorships COMBINED? Is that truly possible? Seriously folks, the persecution of Israel by this corrupt world body held hostage by the Muslim block and Arab Oil, and populated by the worst thugocracies on the planet might almost be mistaken for apocalyptic. It’s sick and bizarre. Netanyahu warns of a malignancy that is sweeping the world called militant Islam (why is nobody else at the U.N. addressing this?) which opposes, not the policies of Israel, but its very existence. He slams Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran for suggesting 9/11 was an American conspiracy, warns of the consequences should Iran acquire a WMD, the rise of militant Islam across the Middle East, and the creation of a Palestinian state. Speaking about the U.N., he says:

This is an unfortunate part about the U.N. institution, it’s a theatre of the Absurd. It doesn’t only cast Israel as the villain, it often casts REAL villains in leading roles. Ghaddafi’s Libya chaired the U.N. commission on human rights. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq headed the U.N. committee on disarmament. Hesbollah controlled Lebanon now presides over the U.N. security council. This means in effect that a terror organization presides over the body entrusted with guaranteeing world security [and recall Sudan’s comic/tragic membership on the U.N.’s human rights committee]. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

Netanyahu addresses the claim by President Abbas that the core of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is the “settlements”:

Well, that’s odd. Our conflict was raging for nearly half a century before there was a single Israeli settlement in the West Bank. So if what President Abbas says is true, then I guess the “settlements” he’s talking about are Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jaffa, Beersheva. Maybe that’s what he meant when he said the other day that Israel has been occupying Palestinian land for sixty-three years. He didn’t say from 1967, he said from 1948. It illustrates a simple truth — the core of the conflict is not the settlements. The core of the conflict is the refusal of the Palestinians to recognize the Jewish state in ANY border.

Responding to demands that Israel make a “sweeping” offer in order to secure peace he says:

There’s only one problem with that theory. We’ve tried it and it hasn’t worked. In 2000 we made a sweeping peace offer that met virtually all of the Palestinian demands. Arafat rejected it. Palestinians then launched a campaign of terror that claimed a thousand Israeli lives. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made an even more sweeping offer to the Palestinians. President Abbas didn’t even respond to it.

But Israel has made more than just sweeping offers:

We have actually conceded territory. We withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, and from every square inch of Gaza in 2005. We left Gaza hoping for peace. We didn’t freeze the settlements in Gaza, we uprooted them. That didn’t calm the militant Islamic storm that threatens us. It only brought the storm closer and made it stronger. Hesbollah and Hamas fired thousands of rockets against our cities from the very territories we vacated. When Israel left Lebanon and Gaza, the moderates didn’t defeat the radicals, the moderates were DEVOURED by the radicals.

On the consequences of Israel’s concessions:

We did exactly what the theory says. And I don’t think people remember how far we went to achieve this. And then having done all that, we gave the keys of Gaza to President Abbas. You can all remember the world applauded the withdrawal as an act of great statesmanship. As a bold act of peace. Now, the theory says it should all work out. But ladies and gentlemen, we didn’t get peace, we got war. We got Iran, which through its proxy Hamas promptly kicked out the Palestinian Authority in one day.

On a Palestinian state in the West Bank:

President Abbas says the Palestinians are armed only with their hopes and dreams. Yup. Hopes, dreams, and ten thousand missiles and grad rockets supplied by Iran, not to mention the river of lethal weapons now flowing into Gaza from the Sinai, from Libya and elsewhere. Thousands of missiles have already rained down on our cities. So you might understand, given all this, Israelis rightly ask what’s to prevent all this from happening again from the West Bank. Israel is prepared to have a Palestinian state in the West Bank, but we are not prepared to have another Gaza there.

And he was just getting started. I haven’t quite understood why Abbas declaring a Palestinian state in the West Bank was so threatening to the Israelis, but I get it now. Makes perfect sense why peace must be achieving FIRST, before statehood is awarded to the Palestinians, which he explains here. The consequences otherwise could quite literally mean the start of a regional war.

December 1, 2010

Bush’s fault! This was an enthralling read. And frightening. Because if we can use this to shut down rogue state nuclear weapons programs, somebody else (the Chinese or Russians) can use one just like this to shut down our own grids– with unimaginable consequences. And we can’t stop it.

Stuxnet “Cyber Missile” Cripples Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Ambitions

In the 20th century, this would have been a job for James Bond. The mission: Infiltrate the highly advanced, securely guarded enemy headquarters where scientists in the clutches of an evil master are secretly building a weapon that can destroy the world. Then render that weapon harmless and escape undetected.

But in the 21st century, Bond doesn’t get the call. Instead, the job is handled by a suave and very sophisticated secret computer worm, a jumble of code called Stuxnet, which in the last year has not only crippled Iran’s nuclear program but has caused a major rethinking of computer security around the globe.

Simply put, Stuxnet is an incredibly advanced, undetectable computer worm that took years to construct and was designed to jump from computer to computer until it found the specific, protected control system that it aimed to destroy: Iran’s nuclear enrichment program.

Intelligence agencies, computer security companies and the nuclear industry have been trying to analyze the worm since it was discovered in June by a Belarus-based company that was doing business in Iran. And what they’ve all found, says Sean McGurk, the Homeland Security Department’s acting director of national cyber security and communications integration, is a “game changer.”The construction of the worm was so advanced, it was “like the arrival of an F-35 into a World War I battlefield,” says Ralph Langner, the computer expert who was the first to sound the alarm about Stuxnet. Others have called it the first “weaponized” computer virus.

The target was seemingly impenetrable; for security reasons, it lay several stories underground and was not connected to the World Wide Web. And that meant Stuxnet had to act as sort of a computer cruise missile: As it made its passage through a set of unconnected computers, it had to grow and adapt to security measures and other changes until it reached one that could bring it into the nuclear facility.

What do the controversies around the proposed mosque near Ground Zero, the eviction of American missionaries from Morocco earlier this year, the minaret ban in Switzerland last year, and the recent burka ban in France have in common? All four are framed in the Western media as issues of religious tolerance. But that is not their essence. Fundamentally, they are all symptoms of what the late Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington called the “Clash of Civilizations,” particularly the clash between Islam and the West.

Huntington’s argument is worth summarizing briefly for those who now only remember his striking title. The essential building block of the post-Cold War world, he wrote, are seven or eight historical civilizations of which the Western, the Muslim and the Confucian are the most important.

The balance of power among these civilizations, he argued, is shifting. The West is declining in relative power, Islam is exploding demographically, and Asian civilizations—especially China—are economically ascendant. Huntington also said that a civilization-based world order is emerging in which states that share cultural affinities will cooperate with each other and group themselves around the leading states of their civilization.

The West’s universalist pretensions are increasingly bringing it into conflict with the other civilizations, most seriously with Islam and China. Thus the survival of the West depends on Americans, Europeans and other Westerners reaffirming their shared civilization as unique—and uniting to defend it against challenges from non-Western civilizations.

President Obama, in his own way, is a One Worlder. In his 2009 Cairo speech, he called for a new era of understanding between America and the Muslim world. It would be a world based on “mutual respect, and upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles.”

The president’s hope was that moderate Muslims would eagerly accept this invitation to be friends. The extremist minority—nonstate actors like al Qaeda—could then be picked off with drones. Of course, this hasn’t gone according to plan. And a perfect illustration of the futility of this approach, and the superiority of the Huntingtonian model, is the recent behavior of Turkey.

According to the One World view, Turkey is an island of Muslim moderation in a sea of extremism. Successive American presidents have urged the EU to accept Turkey as a member on this assumption. But the illusion of Turkey as the West’s moderate friend in the Muslim world has been shattered.

A year ago Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan congratulated Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his re-election after he blatantly stole the presidency. Then Turkey joined forces with Brazil to try to dilute the American-led effort to tighten U.N. sanctions aimed at stopping Iran’s nuclear arms program. Most recently, Turkey sponsored the “aid flotilla” designed to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza and to hand Hamas a public relations victory.

True, there remain secularists in Istanbul who revere the legacy of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Republic of Turkey. But they have no hold over the key government ministries, and their grip over the army is slipping. Today the talk in Istanbul is quite openly about an “Ottoman alternative,” which harks back to the days when the Sultan ruled over an empire that stretched from North Africa to the Caucasus.

If Turkey can no longer be relied on to move towards the West, who in the Muslim world can be? All the Arab countries except Iraq—a precarious democracy created by the United States—are ruled by despots of various stripes. And all the opposition groups that have any meaningful support among the local populations are run by Islamist outfits like the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

In Indonesia and Malaysia, Islamist movements are demanding the expansion of Shariah law. In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak’s time is running out. Should the U.S. support the installation of his son? If so, the rest of the Muslim world will soon be accusing the Obama administration of double standards—if elections for Iraq, why not for Egypt? Analysts have observed that in free and fair elections, a Muslim Brotherhood victory cannot be ruled out.

Algeria? Somalia? Sudan? It is hard to think of a single predominantly Muslim country that is behaving according to the One World script.

The greatest advantage of Huntington’s civilizational model of international relations is that it reflects the world as it is—not as we wish it to be. It allows us to distinguish friends from enemies. And it helps us to identify the internal conflicts within civilizations, particularly the historic rivalries between Arabs, Turks and Persians for leadership of the Islamic world.

But divide and rule cannot be our only policy. We need to recognize the extent to which the advance of radical Islam is the result of an active propaganda campaign. According to a CIA report written in 2003, the Saudis invested at least $2 billion a year over a 30-year period to spread their brand of fundamentalist Islam. The Western response in promoting our own civilization was negligible.

Our civilization is not indestructible: It needs to be actively defended. This was perhaps Huntington’s most important insight. The first step towards winning this clash of civilizations is to understand how the other side is waging it—and to rid ourselves of the One World illusion.

July 23, 2010

Islamic “critical theory” — even their entertainment only exists to further the struggle. Everything for the cause, right? No wonder Jihad and the Left get along so splendidly. They are birds of a feather.

“Hezbollah-Land” Opens In Lebanon

Israel-haters and terrorist-lovers, rejoice! You’ve now got a theme park to call your own. Hezbollah wants you to take the kids to Mleeta, a Lebanese mountain town, where it’s set up an indoor/outdoor museum devoted to the Shiite guerrilla group’s decades at war with the Israelis. It’s as subtle as you might imagine. Inside “the Abyss,” you’ll find destroyed or poorly-maintained Israeli equipment, arranged around what ABC News says is “meant to be a tombstone.” ABC basically found that the former Israeli military bunker is now home to war porn and propaganda. Museum attendees and volunteers apparently aren’t so concerned. “I believe it’s our right to have our own propaganda,” a tour guide tells ABC’s Lara Setrakian. It’s like Disneyland starring Farfour. Hezbollah is hardly the only anti-Israel organization attempting to fight the Jewish state with pop culture and entertainment. As Danger Room co-founder Sharon Weinberger has reported, Hamas has its own movie studio. But “HezbollahLand” takes terror tourism to a whole new level. “We’re going to build motels, playgrounds, camping areas, even spas or swimming pools so that all of the visitors — especially our people — can come here and spend their weekends or vacations,” the guide says.

July 17, 2010

This here is pure Islam. Set in 1986 Iran, The Stoning of Soraya M tells the true story of Soraya, whose arranged marriage to an abusive tyrant has a tragic ending. Here is the full movie starring James Caviezel.

U.S. President Barack Obama told Channel 2 News on Wednesday that he believed Israel would not try to surprise the U.S. with a unilateral attack on Iran. In an interview aired Thursday evening, Obama was asked whether he was concerned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would try to attack Iran without clearing the move with the U.S., to which the president replied “I think the relationship between Israel and the U.S. is sufficiently strong that neither of us try to surprise each other, but we try to coordinate on issues of mutual concern.”

Obama spoke to Channel 2’s Yonit Levy one day after what he described as an “excellent” meeting with Netanyahu at the White House. The two leaders met alone for about 90 minutes Tuesday evening, during which time they discussed the peace process with the Palestinians, the contested Iranian nuclear program, and the strategic understandings between their two countries on Tehran’s efforts to achieve nuclear capabilities.

During the interview Wednesday, when confronted with the anxiety that some Israelis feel toward him, Obama said that “some of it may just be the fact that my middle name is Hussein, and that creates suspicion.”

“Ironically, I’ve got a Chief of Staff named Rahm Israel Emmanuel. My top political advisor is somebody who is a descendent of Holocaust survivors. My closeness to the Jewish American community was probably what propelled me to the U.S. Senate,” Obama said.

“I think that sometimes, particularly in the Middle East, there’s the feeling of the friend of my enemy must be my enemy, and the truth of the matter is that my outreach to the Muslim community is designed precisely to reduce the antagonism and the dangers posed by a hostile Muslim world to Israel and to the West,” Obama went on to say.

First he sets up the strawman– Israelis fear Obama because of his middle name– then he knocks down his own strawman– his Chief of Staff is Jewish. Not to make too much a big deal out of this, but oy vei.

A silly comment, yet perhaps revealing. It was an unguarded moment that can mean one of two things: it doesn’t come from his brain, it comes from the gut, his ego. It’s the part that reacts emotionally to slights. The mocking of his middle name by Obama haters has clearly hit home. There’s baggage there. Instead of deflecting it by self-deprecating the way Bush used to do, he projects it onto the Israelis. He’s not one to laugh at himself. We saw this same thin skin at the White House correspondents dinner. He was a riot, but his jokes were aimed at others.

That, or it reflects how poorly he thinks of the Israelis– they are racists who suffer from an irrational fear of Arabs. He essentially just called them “bitter clingers.” Their fear/hatred is emotional, not based on actual history, politics, or events. All it takes to tap into their irrational fear is the middle name “Hussein.” They get flashbacks at the mere mention of it.

In his defense, he probably thinks the Arabs are just as stupid (see his NASA goodwill tour). Our disagreements aren’t based on tangible– and often irreconcilable– differences. Our differences are emotional and irrational, and can be resolved through apology tours, goodwill tours, and confidence-building measures. Let’s make Muslims “feel good” about themselves. That’s the ticket. Peace will break out when we all realize it’s all just been a big misunderstanding.

Sharia law in Iran demands an adulteress be stoned to death. A stoning in Iran means the adulteress will be buried up to her chest and then stoned by the jubilant Righteous casting stones regulated for size so as not to render the guilty sinner unconscious or kill her immediately. She must suffer first. The stones will break her nose, knock out her eyes and teeth, and gradually pulverize her face to a bloody pulp until she dies a slow, agonizing death. Graphic enough for you? A stoning in Iran means the woman will essentially be tortured to death in the most gruesome way imaginable. They are complete and utter sadists.

A 42-year-old mother of two faces the punishment of death by stoning in Iran after authorities convicted her of adultery. And according to Mina Ahadi, who heads the International Committee Against Stoning and the Death Penalty, only international pressure can help save her.

As Ahadi told CNN: “Legally it’s all over. It’s a done deal. Sakineh can be stoned at any minute.”

The woman, Sakineh Mohammadie Ashtiani, who is from Tabriz, was convicted of “adultery while being married” in 2006 and has already received a punishment of 99 lashes. Should the execution go forward, Ashtiani will be buried up to her chest (for men it is to the waist) and then pelted with stones that are large enough to inflict severe damage but no so large as to kill the person instantly, says Amnesty International, citing Article 104 of Iran’s Penal Code.

Here’s how Ashtiani’s case reached this point, as reported in the Guardian:

Sakineh already endured a sentence of 99 lashes, but her case was re-opened when a court in Tabriz suspected her of murdering her husband. She was acquitted, but the adultery charge was reviewed and a death penalty handed down on the basis of “judge’s knowledge” – a loophole that allows for subjective judicial rulings where no conclusive evidence is present.

Mohammad Mostafaei told CNN last week that Ashtiani may not have been fully capable of understanding the court proceedings due to the fact that she speaks Turkish and not Farsi. Her son Sajad told the Guardian recently, “She’s innocent, she’s been there for five years for doing nothing.”

June 28, 2010

Iran blinks. The cost of saving the pooor Gazans is simply more than Iran is willing to pay.

June 25 (Bloomberg) — Iran said the June 27 departure of a ship carrying aid to the Gaza Strip has been canceled because of Israel’s vow to prevent Iranian and Lebanese vessels from breaching its blockade of the Palestinian enclave.

“The Zionist regime has made sending aid to Gaza a political issue,”[LOL] Hossein Sheikholeslam, head of the Iranian agency to support Palestinians, was cited as saying by the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency late yesterday.

He referred to Israel’s warning to the United Nations that it may take military action to prevent ships from reaching Gaza. “In order not to give the Zionist regime an excuse, we will send the aid through other routes and without Iran’s name,” said Sheikholeslam, a former lawmaker and diplomat.

“The costs of sending aid to Gaza has increased,” Sheikholeslam said. [Sheik Hole Slam???] “As Israel has said it will confiscate ships, no company is prepared to rent their vessels.”[Clearly, saving the pooor Gazans from utter starvation and death is not worth the cost of a smallish Class VI bulk freighter]Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor declined to comment on the cancellation of the Iranian voyage when reached by telephone today.

Israel said in letters to the UN June 18 that it may use its military to block ships from Lebanon that plan to sail to Gaza with aid. The organizers of the Lebanese effort may be linked to Hezbollah and some have said they wish to become “martyrs,” according to the letters from Israeli UN Ambassador Gabriela Shalev. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on June 23 that plans to send ships from Iran and Lebanon were an attempt to “create a provocation.” He said on June 2 that there were no shortages of food or medicine in Gaza. Israel agreed on June 20 to allow all food items and a wider range of building supplies into Gaza by road, while banning materials that might be used for attacks.

The Red Crescent Society’s chartered vessel was scheduled to leave the southern Iranian port of Bandar Abbas with 1,100 tons of medicine, food and hygiene goods donated by Iranians, the organization said. Five Red Crescent representatives and five journalists were going to be on board, it said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, in a June 14 report, called on Israel to end the blockade, saying it subjected Gaza’s civilians to “collective punishment imposed in clear violation of Israel’s obligations under international humanitarian law.”[Newspeak. The bar on “collective penalties” forbids the imposition of criminal or military penalties (imprisonment, death, etc) on some people for crimes committed by other individuals– you know, rounding up and killing 100 villagers for every German soldier killed by partisans. Blockades or sanctions were never meant to fall under that prohibition. Notice the launching of rockets on innocent Israelis is never referred to as “collective punishment” by these Leftwing types. Their concern for “human rights” is always a one-way street, and never in a direction that favors Israel.]It also urged those with “an influence on the situation, including Hamas, to do their utmost to help Gaza’s civilian population.” [Doing their “utmost” does not include the possibility of getting your freighter confiscated]

The Hamas government’s economy minister, Ziad Zaza, dismissed Israel’s relaxing of the blockade as “nonsense,” saying Israel was trying to reduce international pressure on it.[Then running the Gaza blockade–instead of delivering supplies through the Israeli port of Ashod– is equally “nonsense,” as this is similarly done for the purpose of increasing international pressure on Israel] Hamas, which won Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006, ousted forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah group and seized full control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, leaving Abbas in charge of the West Bank. Hamas is considered a terrorist group by Israel, the U.S. and the European Union.

June 14, 2010

14 Jun 2010 GMT 09:27:23 report TEHRAN (Reuters) — Iran is sending aid ships to blockaded Gaza, state radio said on Monday — a move likely to be considered provocative by Israel which accuses Tehran of arming the Palestinian enclave’s Islamist rulers, Hamas. 100,000 Iranians volunteer to crew ships First ship left Iran Sunday, another leaves this week. Iran says will continue until Gaza blockade lifted. One ship left port on Sunday and another will depart by Friday, loaded with food, construction material and toys, the report said. The boats would be part of international efforts to break Israel’s isolation of the Gaza Strip. “Until the end of the Gaza blockade, Iran will continue to ship aid,” said an official at Iran’s Society for the Defence of the Palestinian Nation. While Israel has long suspected Iran, which rejects the Jewish state’s right to exist, of supplying weapons to Hamas, Tehran says it only provides moral support to the group. Israeli troops two weeks ago boarded a flotilla of Turkish aid ships heading to Gaza on May 31 and killed nine pro-Palestinian activists, most of them Turks. Public opinion in Muslim countries was outraged by the killings. An official of the Iranian Red Crescent Society’s youth organisation said some 100,000 Iranians had volunteered as potential crew for aid ships, Iran daily reported. A senior Iranian official said earlier Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards were ready to provide a military escort to aid ships heading to Gaza if Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei so commands. But the Guards’ deputy head, Hossein Salami, said there were no plans to do so. “Such a thing is not on our agenda,” he was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency on Monday. Any such military mobilisation would risk a major confrontation with Israel, which fears Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme is aimed at developing atomic bombs.

Without fanfare, the United Nations this week elected Iran to its Commission on the Status of Women, handing a four-year seat on the influential human rights body to a theocratic state in which stoning is enshrined in law and lashings are required for women judged “immodest.”

Just days after Iran abandoned a high-profile bid for a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council, it began a covert campaign to claim a seat on the Commission on the Status of Women, which is “dedicated exclusively to gender equality and advancement of women,” according to its website.

Iran’s election comes just a week after one of its senior clerics declared that women who wear revealing clothing are to blame for earthquakes, a statement that created an international uproar — but little affected their bid to become an international arbiter of women’s rights.

“Iran’s discriminatory laws demonstrate that the Islamic Republic does not believe in gender equality,” reads the letter, signed by 214 activists and endorsed by over a dozen human rights bodies.

The letter draws a dark picture of the status of women in Iran: “women lack the ability to choose their husbands, have no independent right to education after marriage, no right to divorce, no right to child custody, have no protection from violent treatment in public spaces, are restricted by quotas for women’s admission at universities, and are arrested, beaten, and imprisoned for peacefully seeking change of such laws.”

Yet critics of Iran’s human rights record say the country has taken “every conceivable step” to deter women’s equality. “In the past year, it has arrested and jailed mothers of peaceful civil rights protesters,” wrote three prominent democracy and human rights activists in an op-ed published online Tuesday by Foreign Policy Magazine.

“It has charged women who were seeking equality in the social sphere — as wives, daughters and mothers — with threatening national security, subjecting many to hours of harrowing interrogation. Its prison guards have beaten, tortured, sexually assaulted and raped female and male civil rights protesters.”

Iran’s elevation to the commission comes as a black eye just days after the U.S. helped lead a successful effort to keep Iran off the Human Rights Council, which is already dominated by nations that are judged by human rights advocates as chronic violators of essential freedoms. The current membership of the women’s commission is little different.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday warned the Zionist regime of Israel against any new attack on the Gaza Strip, cautioning that such a move would put an end to the life of the illegitimate regime.

Addressing a congregation of Iranian people in the country’s northwestern city of Orumiyeh today, Ahmadinejad pointed to the recent media speculations about a possible Israeli attack on Gaza, and stated, “I want to warn the Zionists …that you are making a mistake as you made mistakes in the past.”

“Because an attack on Gaza would not make you (Zionists) mightier and would not restore your damaged prestige,” Ahmadinejad added. “And you (Zionists) should know that an attack on Gaza will end your inauspicious and filthy life,” the Iranian president warned.

He also deplored supporters of the Zionist regime, and pointed out, “If you support the Zionist regime in its new crimes against the people of Gaza, Palestine, Lebanon or Syria, you should know that the nations of the region will blacklist your name.”

Ahmadinejad, who made the remarks during the inauguration ceremony of the Middle East’s biggest iron ore pelletizing factory in the southern city of Sirjan on Saturday, said Zionists are looking for an excuse to attack Gaza. “What I want to say to the Zionists and their supporters is enough with the crimes. Do not make your load (of sin) even heavier than this,” he said.

The president said “the myth of Israel’s invincibility is over” and Israel is merely seeking to maintain its image as a dreadful power to preserve its existence. “They had created the illusion in everyone’s mind that they (the Zionists) is invincible. But that myth was shattered after the regime suffered two defeats, once in Southern Lebanon and later on in Gaza,” Ahmadinejad said.

“Now, they are trying to compensate (those defeats), as they know that they will reach the end if they lose the awe attributed to them and if regional nations no longer fear them.”

Israel is an island of democracy in an ocean of Arab fascism. They are an armed camp surrounded by hostile neighbors. They have to be. Today, America is their one and only friend. The Muslim world’s decades-long agenda to marginalize them and turn them into a pariah state has succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. We see the fruits of that success everywhere, from the grassroots street protest to the highest levels of American government. Israel as a country is what the Jewish people used to be among the nations– outcast. From theSyndicated News Articles by Eric Hoffer:

The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it, Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey threw out a million Greeks and Algeria a million Frenchman. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese and no one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel , the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single one.

Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious, it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world. Other nations, when they are defeated, survive and recover but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed. Had Nasser triumphed in June [1967], he would have wiped Israel off the map, and no one would have lifted a finger to save the Jews.

No commitment to the Jews by any government, including our own, is worth the paper it is written on. There is a cry of outrage all over the world when people die in Vietnam or when two Blacks are executed in Rhodesia . But, when Hitler slaughtered Jews no one demonstrated against him. The Swedes, who were ready to break off diplomatic relations with America because of what we did in Vietnam , did not let out a peep when Hitler was slaughtering Jews. They sent Hitler choice iron ore, and ball bearings, and serviced his troops in Norway .

The Jews are alone in the world. If Israel survives, it will be solely because of Jewish efforts. And Jewish resources. Yet at this moment, Israel is our only reliable and unconditional ally. We can rely more on Israel than Israel can rely on us.

And one has only to imagine what would have happened in the six day war [1967] had the Arabs and their Russian backers won the war, to realize how vital the survival of Israel is to America and the West in general. I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the Holocaust will be upon us all.

Eric Hoffer was one of the most influential American philosophers and free thinkers of the 20th Century. He was known for his thoughts on mass movements and fanaticism, for which he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1983 by President Reagan. This was written by Hoffer in the LA Times in 1968 — 42 years ago. Nothing has changed.

David Horovitz of the Jerusalem Post argues that the root of the current rift between the U.S. and Israel is a stark difference of perception between Washington and Jerusalem as to the Palestinian Authority’s peace-making readiness and intentions. According to Horovitz, Washington believes that the PA wants a deal and is prepared to make the compromises necessary to forge one. Meanwhile, Jerusalem considers this assessment “unfathomable.”

Horovitz says that this divide seems almost impossible to bridge. However, if the rift really is only a disagreement about Palestinian intentions, then there is a potential solution: make more concessions to the PA and then, when the PA responds not with concessions of its own by with more demands, count on that response to lift the scales from Washington’s eyes.

Such an approach would not be an easy one for Netanyahu to undertake, given the composition of his coalition. But Netanyahu is clever politican and, if he agrees with Horowitz’s diagnosis, he will be tempted to find a way to placate Washington with concessions and then wait for the PA not to “miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”

I fear, however, that Horovitz’s diagnosis is not correct. The divide in perceptions about the PA may have driven disagreements between Washington and Jerusalem during the latter part of the Bush administration. But today we see not a disagreement but a feud, including an attempt by Washington to bring down the Israeli government. It’s implausible, I think, to attribute such a bitter rift to a mere disagreement about facts on the ground.

In my opinion, President Obama’s tilt towards the Palestinians is rooted in ideology, a considerably softer version of the ideology espoused by Jeremiah Wright . The facts that matter to this president do not pertain to the PA’s intentions. Rather, I suspect the key facts are these: compared to Israelis, Palestinians are downtrodden and non-Western. They are what leftist academics call “the other.” And promoting the interests of “the other” is a big deal for Obama — indeed, this imperative seems like the closest thing he has to a religion.

If I’m right, then Netanyahu will never be able to placate Obama. And he should not try.

Obama blocks delivery of bunker-busters to Israel

WASHINGTON — The United States has diverted a shipment of bunker-busters designated for Israel.

Officials said the U.S. military was ordered to divert a shipment of smart bunker-buster bombs from Israel to a military base in Diego Garcia. They said the shipment of 387 smart munitions had been slated to join pre-positioned U.S. military equipment in Israel Air Force bases. “This was a political decision,” an official said.

In 2008, the United States approved an Israeli request for bunker-busters capable of destroying underground facilities, including Iranian nuclear weapons sites. Officials said delivery of the weapons was held up by the administration of President Barack Obama.

The decision to divert the BLU munitions was taken amid the crisis between Israel and the United States over planned construction of Jewish homes in Jerusalem. The administration, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has warned that Washington could reduce military aid to Israel because of its construction policy.

Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, was quoted as saying that his country faced its biggest crisis with the United States since 1975. A pro-Israel lobbyist said Oren was referring to the current U.S. embargo, which echoed a decision taken 35 years ago by then-President Gerald Ford after Israel’s refusal to withdraw from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Oren has since denied the remark.

Bibi to Barack: Eat my shorts.

Israeli will neither change policies that have been upheld by its various governments since 1967 nor halt construction in Jerusalem, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu stressed at Sunday’s cabinet meeting. “We will clarify that building in Jerusalem is like building in Tel Aviv,” Netanyahu said. A final-status agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, he said, could only be reached at the conclusion of direct talks in which the two sides “sit together and sort the issues out.” The prime minister said that the planned proximity talks – indirect negotiations with US mediation – would enable the two sides to individually state their case, but would not facilitate an enduring peace process.

Netanyahu said his position would remain unflagging during his visit to Washington later on Sunday, and that he would clarify that to the Obama administration.

If Barack won’t give him the green light to take out Iran’s nuclear sites, then what the frik does Bibi need bunker busters for? Keep building, Israel. Do your thing.

And with this, CCHQ commences our coverage of Obama’s war on Israel. President Obama accepts the fact that Israel is a strong U.S. ally, that the U.S. Congress, as well as the American people, are solidly pro-Israel, and that his party relies on Jewish support here in the U.S. These are inescapable facts. But I don’t think he is a friend of Israel. He couldn’t possibly be; not after attending Rev. Wright’s church for the last 20 years. And nothing that he has done so far suggests that he is. It’s going to be rough sailing for the Jewish State the next three years.

When the mullahs fall, this is the Iran we will seek to welcome back to the fold. We treasure our own Western civilization, and have become a wee bit attached to what we used to call Christendom. But we must emphasize, gentle readers, we do not hate the people of Iran, nor do we even hate a peaceful and moderate Islam necessarily.

Barack denounced them late, but he denounced them. The die is cast, his “unclenched hand” has been withdrawn. Does he know something we don’t?

Reports from Iran indicate that the Supreme National Security Council has ordered a complete check-up of the jet which is on standby to fly Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei and his family to Russia should the situation in Iran spiral out of control. The order, to the Pasdaran Revolutionary Guard Corps, was dated on Sunday, 27 December. A fax containing the order was sent to Dutch-based Shahrzad News.

In Iran, tens of thousands of pro-government supporters took to the streets on Tuesday, calling for leaders of the opposition to be punished. They say the opposition is to blame for the protests during the Shiite festival of Ashura in which eight people are reported to have been killed by riot police.

Opposition supporters launched the demonstrations following the death of Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri a critic of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The protests were crushed by the authorities and the opposition is now calling for the government to apologise for the excessive violence used by the police.

President Ahmadinejad says the United States, Great Britain and Israel are behind the protests. The British ambassador in Tehran has been summoned by the Iranian authorities. The Revolutionary Guard says the foreign media and Iran’s enemies are waging a psychological war aimed at bringing down the legitimate Iranian government.

Some Iranian MPs are calling for demonstrators to be sentenced to death. Various opposition figures have been arrested including the sister of Nobel peace prize laureate Schirin Ebadi.

You won’t see this on the Huffington Post. This is hardball Klingon style.

Wow.

Absolutely shocking. This is not amusing at all. Nor something about which to gloat. I feel humiliated for the man.

President Obama could certainly draw the plebes on his apology tours overseas, but how effective were those apologies in the Klingon halls of power? This is the president who is going to disarm Iran? hehe! Thanks for the belly laugh. No, this is a president way out of his league. Iran has no intention of cooperating with this wet noodle. Why should they? When he remained silent during the Iran democracy protests, he portrayed himself as toothless.

We needed Russian help with Iran. They are giving us none. In fact, they are colluding with the Iranians. But that didn’t have to be the case! President “Unclenched Fist” Obama gave the Russians our missile defense shield in Poland. What did they give him in return? Nothing. Zilch. Nada. He gave it to them for free, and in response he gets the Big Snub. That’s some real hardball our President plays.

I don’t believe the foreign policy advice President Obama is getting could possibly be that bad. It just can’t be. I think he’s winging it. Trying to be “different.” Like that silly bow to Emperor Akihito. This man rode to victory in great part based on the power of his charisma and a swooning media. Is it possible that President Obama has bought into his own hype? Does he really think the Klingon High Command will respond the way the foreign plebes and intellectuals do? I think the proof is in the pudding– NO.

Whatever the world may have thought of George Bush personally, they didn’t consider him a wet noodle. They feared him. They feared him because they thought he was just a little bit crazy, a “cowboy.” Unpredictable. The way they did Ronald Reagan. And that’s what you want — a President the Klingons fear, and the intellectuals loathe. So very unlike Presidents Obama and Carter. Because being “liked” doesn’t cut it out there, folks. It just doesn’t.